


The Warmth of Memory

by writerdragonfly



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Can you call "fluff and angst" by "burnt marshmallows" if marshmallows are involved?, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Snart Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5404667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Cocoa isn't cocoa without the mini marshmallows, and you're out. I checked.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Warmth of Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragdragdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragdragdragon/gifts).



> Oops, I accidentally gave the mini marshmallows comment a backstory?
> 
> ♥ You can blame my girl [ dragdragdragon ](http://dragdragdragon.tumblr.com) for this.

The nature of his inherent talents means that he can never forget, never lose those insignificant little facts that fade from people's memory with the slow slogging passage of time. He catalogues his mind like a library, pretends that the things he'd rather forget are locked behind the impenetrable doors of his Forbidden Section, accessible only when the right key clicks into place and allows him to crawl around the dusty shelves and dangerous tomes. It's within those shelves that he keeps his regrets like scattered bookmarks hidden within massive volumes of childhood memory, slipped between the fragile pages of good days and the far more prominent delicacy of bad ones.

 

In some long ignored corner of the shelves he visits least, he hides the little book of best things. He doesn't move it inside his carefully forged fortress, reimagined in the years of Barry Allen's youth to match the wonder and terror of a children's book bibliotheca. Instead he hides it in plain sight, makes it easy to overlook because he understands the necessity of the act.

 

Every snapshot is filed away with a cold stare, placed where it belongs with a quick thought and resolutely unfocused on until it becomes necessary again, if it ever does.

 

Leonard Snart's mind is a library, and he accesses the card catalog with the brutal efficiency of a trained librarian.

 

There aren't many of those that make it into the little book of best things. Mostly those are Lisa, because Lisa is one of the only things in his life he'd ever allowed himself to care about, ever allowed himself to dwell upon.

 

But when he steps inside the sanctity of the West home, something about the quiet warmth within makes it impossible to ignore that deliberately forgotten corner and the red silk of the bookmark marking a place in that little book of best things.  Something about the comfortable glow of fairy lights and the lingering smell of pine brings something uncomfortable to rise in his chest until he's awash with the memory of his mother.

 

When he was twelve and Lisa was four, his father had been gone for two long days. Presumably he was working, though with time Len had come to the inevitable conclusion of him having spent another weekend in a hotel room with a doped up prostitute or on a bender in one of the other nearby cities where he could escape into the anonymity of no one knowing his real name. Both were possible, probable even--he knew this from later experience, though he wished that he had never learned it.

 

But on this particular occasion, they'd been holed up together in their childhood home in the heat of summer. The air conditioner--which was iffy at best--wasn't working and the entire place was stifling, which was why Lisa was sitting on the kitchen counter in her too tight bathing suit, the wisps of her sweat damp hair that had fallen out of her ponytail being gently brushed back by the blowing fan sitting squat in front of the open refrigerator.  Len himself was standing bare chested in front of the sink, considering dumping his glass of somewhat lukewarm water over his head. He was sweating just as badly as his glass was sweating--condensation tumbled down his fingertips--and he wanted nothing more than to sit in some dark corner somewhere and cool off.

 

But Lisa was his priority, had been since the moment their father brought her home from the hospital swaddled in a bright pink blanket. Lisa had been his priority since the moment he met her, would always be. Which was why instead of hiding, he was standing in his kitchen in nothing but last year's swimming trunks, the scattering of bruises from his latest lesson a sickly display across his bare chest and arms.

 

The refrigerator made a sound like a mechanical groan and stuttered, the power in the kitchen clicking off in a flash. The fan spun around a couple more weak turns before it stopped too, and Lisa had giggled when Len groaned. He sat her down on the ground and closed the refrigerator, asked her to stay there until he got back and then escaped into the closet they called their laundry room to flip the breaker.

 

A few seconds after he'd returned to a newly relit kitchen and spinning fan, there had been the recognizable sound of the front door opening and then they were joined by a woman that Len only vaguely recognized, her resemblance being what little he could remember of his mother.

 

She called him baby and kissed his forehead with her red painted lips, her lipstick smearing across the sweat beading on his forehead like a slash of blood.

 

She'd picked Lisa up, rocking her gently with a swish of her hips as she talked to him about his favorite classes in school and ignored the entire topic of his father entirely. After a few moments, she'd sifted through the mostly bare cupboards until she had a mass of mostly useless ingredients piled on the counter. Len had watched, entirely enraptured as the stove _click, click, click, woosh_ -ed into working, as she stirred things into the pot boiling on the stove that he usually made Lisa macaroni in. She was humming to music he didn't recognize as she worked, his little sister still firmly latched to her side like a leech.

 

She'd found their blender hidden in the back of a collection of detritus behind platters they never used and dishes they never bothered with, thrown the tiny slivers of ice cubes that Len had replaced only a few hours before into it and added the contents of the pot.

 

A few minutes later she poured the icy mix into a couple of Lisa's little plastic glasses and they sat on the kitchen floor sipping frozen hot cocoa in silence. Afterward they’d piled into Len and Lisa’s shared bedroom and sat around a candle, the wick flickering bright in the relative darkness of the room with no windows. They roasted mini marshmallows over that tiny little flame, because _“it’s not cocoa without the marshmallows, baby,”_ and Lisa’s giggles echoed through their little house like twinkling bells.

 

He doesn't remember cleaning up, doesn't remember her leaving. Just wakes up in his bed with Lisa curled into his side, still in her tiny little swimsuit.

He never did find out if it was real--if it was really his mother who had swept in like a ghost and gave him a _good_ memory in the midst of the bad, if it was some stranger instead--or if it had been the product of the too hot sun and the last dregs of his exhaustion causing a hallucination instead.

 

He likes to think of it as a memory, as the last thing his mother did before she left for good.

 

He remembers that when he steps into the house that _feels_ like a home, feels like that memory clings to the bones of it, feels like contentment.

 

He remembers but he doesn’t reshelve his book of best things, not yet. He keeps that page open as he rustles his way through the kitchen, searches in vain for mini marshmallows. He keeps that feeling in mind as he settles down with a ridiculous looking reindeer mug and sips at his cocoa. He knows it won’t last, that it can’t. As soon as Barry Allen--or indeed, either of the Wests--walks into the house, the sticky memory of being _loved_ will be snatched away, his book closed, shoved back on the shelf.

 

So he holds onto that as long as he can, feels the warmth of the house seep into his skin, and waits.

  


-x-

 

_“Cocoa isn't cocoa without the mini marshmallows, and you're out. I checked.”_

 

-x-

 


End file.
